Most of the time pests and disease are just nature's way of telling the farmer he's doing something wrong.

The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.

The banquet is in the first bite.

It has become much harder, in the past century, to tell where the garden leaves off and pure nature begins.

California’s Proposition 37, which would require that genetically modified (G.M.) foods carry a label, has the potential to do just that - to change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too.

Wrangham cites several studies indicating that in fact humans don't do well on raw food: they can't maintain their body weight, and half of the women on a raw-food regimen stop menstruating. Devotees of raw food rely heavily on juicers and blenders, because otherwise they would have to spend as much time chewing as the chimps do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extract sufficient energy from unprocessed plant matter to power a body with such a big, hungry brain.

The corporatization of something as basic and intimate as eating is, for many of us today, a good place to draw the line.